How to edit autocorrect and the dictionary on Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with system-wide autocorrect and spell check. You wouldn’t know it does since it isn’t enabled by default and because it works in very few apps. It works in OneNote, Edge, and on Internet Explorer. If you use these apps, and have discovered a few others where autocorrect and/or spell check, you might need to edit autocorrect and the dictionary on occasion. Here’s how.

Edit autocorrect and dictionary

The files where Windows 10 saves all its autocorrect entries and its dictionary are located here;

%AppData%\Microsoft\Spelling

For each language that you’ve added, or ever added to your system, there will be a separate folder. The autocorrect and the dictionary for each language is maintained separately.

Inside each language folder, you will find three files;

default.acl

default.dic

default.exc

All three files can be edited in Notepad or in any other text editor like Notepad++. Before you can edit these files though, you need to know what they are for.

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The default.acl file contains words that are autocorrected. The default.dic file is the dictionary file. The default.exc file contains a list of words that are excluded from autocorrect.

Now that you know which file is meant to do what, you can start editing them. You should leave the default.dic file alone unless you’ve added an incorrect exception to your dictionary. If you have, simply open the file, remove the incorrect entry and save it.

If you want to define an autocorrect word, open the default.acl file in notepad. Enter the word, and its correction in the following format;

Syntax

incorrect word | correct word

Example

teh | the

If you ever want to look at the default words that you’ve added to your dictionary and you don’t want to open these files, you can go through the Settings app instead.

Open the Settings app and go to the Privacy group of settings. Select Inking & typing personalization and click View User Dictionary. On the screen that follows, you will see a list of the words you’ve added to your dictionary, and a Clear Dictionary button that will remove your custom edits from it.

If you only want to remove select entries, you’re going to have to edit the files we mentioned earlier. It is a relatively simple process however, if you’re making lots of edits to the files, it’s a good idea to back them up before you make any changes to them and remember that these files are separate for each language that you add to Windows 10.